it’s a riff on Arthur Machen’s “The Great God Pan,” which is one of the best horror stories ever written. Maybe the best in the English language. Mine isn’t anywhere near that good, but I loved the chance to put neurotic behavior—obsessive/compulsive disorder—together with the idea of a monster-filled macroverse. That was a good combination. As for Machen vs. Lovecraft: sure, Lovecraft was ultimately better, because he did more with those concepts, but “The Great God Pan” is more reader-friendly. And Machen was there first. He wrote “Pan” in 1895, when HPL was five years old.

The above quote is by Stephen King and if anyone can judge a horror story then he is probably the man, it can be found on his website here as part of one of his ‘self interviews’. Sadly I don’t have a copy of ‘The Great God Pan’ as this is the only book I have by Arthur Machen, which is actually the pen name of Welsh fantasy and horror writer Arthur Llewellyn Jones. Even Lovecraft regarded Machen as a great in the horror story genre naming him amongst the four modern masters of the style and he was highly influential in the development of Lovecraft’s Cthulhu stories. This book consists of fourteen short stories which whilst none of them are of the horror genre give a glimpse of the abilities of this popular writer many of whose works are still in print almost eighty years after his death. Indeed several bear the mark of another writer who came later that of Roald Dahl and his ‘Tales of the Unexpected’.

As is often the case with collections of short stories the better examples are the longer ones, especially in this set, the final tale of which, that I will also come to last, is excellent. The stories range from a story about a clergyman who vanishes without trace from his home for six weeks only to re-appear exactly as he was last seen by his housekeeper working at his desk and with no feeling that he had stepped away for more than a few minutes. One story I particularly enjoyed is ‘The Tree of Life’ which tells of a seriously unwell man running the lands of his estate from his sick bed by communicating his wishes via his land agent. The ending of the tale completely upends the story so far but in a completely believable manner. ‘The Bright Boy’ and ‘The Happy Children’ are the closest we get to horror in this collection with the first story of a man with the appearance of a boy and the odd occurrences that happen in the vicinity of the house where he lives with his supposed parents. The happy children tells however of a journalist unexpectedly coming across the spirits of dead children in the streets of a Yorkshire town before they process up to the abbey ruins. There is also the story an unspecified ceremony being performed at a strange stone in the woods that I wish was longer as the atmosphere is so well created and then it stops leaving me wanting more and ‘The Soldiers Rest’ where it gradually becomes clear what sort of rest he is having. All of these are wonderfully written but it is the final story of this collection along with one that is sadly missing that cement Machen in his position as a truly great writer of short stories never mind his horror novels.

The one that is missing is ‘The Bowmen’ which was first published on 14th September 1914 and tells the story of a horde of phantom bowmen from the Battle of Agincourt, five centuries earlier, which came to the aid of British troops at the Battle of Mons. This story, as it was published in The Evening News newspaper which Machen worked for at the time became believed as true and is the foundation of The Angel of Mons and evidence of divine intervention on behalf of the British soldiers. No matter how often Machen tried to say that he made it up he was rarely believed and the tale was spread around the world as fact. The story that completes this set is however ‘The Great Return’ and this is the first published story telling of the existence of the Holy Grail in modern times and the miracles that occur along with its reappearance. The story which along with Machen’s novel taking the same theme ‘The Secret Glory’, which he had already written by then but which wasn’t published until 1922, would clearly influence writers such as Dan Brown in his Da Vinci Code and George Lucas with Indiana Jones amongst others.

You can find out more about Machen via ‘The Friends of Arthur Machen‘ an international literary society dedicated to the works of this remarkable author.